Be generous, give

a like for a like, force it --


through the bad gateway.

See me now,
So you can’t picture me later.
Let the blue light move across my vinyl skin.
Trace the slew of whispered pros down my spine,
too soft to hear.
Pull my hair until you tear out the pages that I won’t read you,
Because I won’t read you.

I’m fine with watching the movie and never reading the book.
Maybe skimming the first few pages, then leaving the rest to collect dust on the nightstand...
Without so much as a bookmark.

For now, our legs on cotton sheets are moving on the screen.
A flash of images refracts into our minds,
only to be lost by next week.
A predictable plot.
No suspense of a next chapter.
No rich velvet of ink on our eyes.
They say the written word is dead,
But I don’t know…
maybe someday I’ll try to read something…
But not tonight-

Hit Play.

I didn't saw you in gold and silver sparkles
Glitters everywhere, in a slow motion type of stare
I didnt saw you in magical nights
In poetry lines, or lipsticks changing the lights
Like the spotlight's on you and I

I didn't saw you picking up the roses in the garden-filled butterflies
How the songs capture our eyes, in glimpse of heaven or disguise
I didn't saw you escaping at 12 am, enchanting spells in sacred room,
Where the color purple's only for you, but you can only see blue

I didn't saw you in fairytales
But I saw you in mine
In my little, mono-lid, honeyed eyes
Between the waking and the siesta time
I saw you in my photographs filmed in my mind
In counting hours before the class start
And haunting hours when end of school year just waved to us

I didn't saw you in someone else's portrayal of how you were painted in them
I saw you in vivid lines I wrote, in feelings I have known, fore years I won't let go.

I saw you, and I didn't want to
You saw me, I know you wanted to
But they belonged to 2018 version of my life
All the tragic had happened in 2020's
I've learned pretty much not to be fine when I'm fine.

//

you make loving
unconditionally
my agenda for
everyday,
you make
living in the
moment a
feeling i’ve missed
on my entire life,
you make sunshine
seem dim in the
presence of your
warmth,
you make the
hours feel like
minutes
and make hours out
of minutes,
you make
rainbows replace
my thoughts,
you make the butterflies
in my stomach
work extra hard
and the blood rushing
too fast, too hard,
trying to catch up
with the rush
going through
my body
when i hold
your hand.

I always knew that you were trouble
But I let my selfishness get in it
And now I'm stuck with you
Creeping your way

I ask myself
Why do I do what I do?
I'm too loving
Too kind
Too generous,
I almost feel like it's never worth it
Because you just kept me
In a jar with pencils and sticky notes,

You use me, draw on me carefully
Enough to crack me
But never break me.

Keke!
Do you love me, would you read me?
Say you'll never return me to the shelf?

there’s a calm in the air, in the water, in my heart
the skies no longer rub off and make me blue
it only feeds me truth
it’s better than it once was
my blood is more unapologetic and my eyes they wander
i’m walking through the gravel barefoot and it eventually turns to snow
in my mind you stand in front of me and i’m asking “what else do you want to know?”
i awake and my breathing releases calm
the anxiety has ceased and it no longer shows itself by the dawn

I don't want to be loved just because of how i look
I wanted someone to read me like a book.

Search for my darkest secrets
My weaknesses and all of my regrets
Accept all the pages bout how I'm flawed
and doesn't matter how it is so broad
Cite all my never ending thoughts
Like how universe being explored by cosmonauts
Highlight all my deepest fears
That whispers like the music of spheres
List down all your favorites of me
write them all like ABC’s
Bookmark all my childhood memories
my nostalgias, experience and discoveries
Fold all the times i feel the world is against me
and how the universe won't notice me
Underline all my scars and how i got them
connect my moles and freckles like a poem

But last and foremost is that someone I look,
who will patiently wait and stay for one book,
and that is me,
To finish every page of my story,
even though it is not infallible,
but after all the wait, it's worth it.

As I sit here in the dark,
It’s so silent…
But, at the same time, it really isn’t.

What exactly is silence when there is always n o i s e?
Of our minds
SCREAMING…yelling…constantly talking…
Verbally, mentally, and silently vocalizing the numerous, duplicitous details of our waking lives.

The mind never stops. Never shuts up.
And as much as I’d like it to, I can’t make it
As long as the body goes,
the mind reveals,
it revels, in the subconscious awareness of our obliviousness.

Is anything a surprise...
Or, do we always know?
But then again, what exactly is “knowing”?
When with one word, one action, one choice…
It can all be so different.
New. Changed. Non-existent.
And once again, we are left in the Unknown…(1 step forward – 2 steps backwards).
All the while, wandering ….wondering
Constantly searching for answers…
Seeking relief from the never ending “what ifs”,
the heart-piercing, perpetual mental lists of  “I should haves…”

There was a time when I questioned it all….
Repeatedly. Tortuously…to no avail it seemed
Until I somehow managed to create a world….
Founded on doubt, confusion, unfamiliarity, and F E A R.

It all began in my head. Simple enough..
That’s where it all begins, right?
This world throws all types of things at us to distract us…
To deceive us, to desensitize and dehumanize us.
To slowly, but surely, annihilate any bit of the God-given life that was once inside of us…
the original covenant of everlasting life, knowledge, and the desires of our heart.

Money.
Fame.
***.
Status.
Drugs.
Love.

It’s whatever is your particular fancy of ammunition…

You see, that’s the thing…
They let us choose.
….So we think..
Some call it Free Will, some call it Destiny…
or some simply call it, “Living Life”

They tell us we NEED this and we need to look like THAT.
So there we go, on a blind, circuitous pursuit to become something that never existed…
Til we are so completely absorbed in this twisted, delusional mirage of Life

… til it’s as if we, ourselves, never existed.
And the crazy thing is… some people never WAKE UP.

Yes, I said wake up.
As in realize that NONE of this is real.
Yet, it is merely the fictitious illustrations of the repetitious reels of our corrupted minds….
Our perverse and evil hearts.

which are both constantly evolving…steadily revolving.
Tainted by the high and forever-rising demands of this world…
Social media,
Music,
The arts.
Sports.
Friends….
and even family…

Little do we know, we are everyday loading the gun of “self-hatred”
….Filling it with little shiny bullets disguised as likes…views...followers.

Lighting the match and igniting the deadly and all consuming flames of “pride, bigotry, and greed”
Mine, mine, mine….
Destroying anything, or anybody, that tries to extinguish and destroy…

Holding, polishing, and aiming the two-edged knife of “insecurity, disloyalty, and ulterior motives.
Piercing the side of those we love.

When will this battle end?
When will the power of love, overcome the love of power?
They say that then we will know peace…
But to have peace, we have to have calamity…agitation…war.

Oh, the beauty of contradictions…

So far apart on the spectrum of life
Yet so strikingly similar.
Ying and Yang.

It’s a matter of life and death…
The absence of one creates the presence of the other.
and, the presence of the other, exemplifies the absence of the one.

And we know this…
Yet, we still choose to be destructive.
Why is it so much easier, seemingly, to do wrong than right?
Will the world ever know…?
So, with this paradoxical world we live in, how do we find stability?

Some find solace in drugs…
Some in love…
However, some find religion.
No scratch that – A RELATIONSHIP
…with a higher power …
One who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.
One who can guide our footsteps,
Eliminate all of the outside deceiving thoughts of “what if…” and “why’s”
“trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…”
That’s what the Word says, right?

…one who can give us stability of our mind and the desires of our heart.
Jeremiah 33:3 says, “call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and mighty things you do not know”

Sounds too good to be true, huh?
But so does, relief and recovery sold to you in a pill bottle from an institution set up to control…
The populations and masses…
The circulation of currency.
The separation of powers.

So, at the end of the day….it’s up to you whether or not you continue sleeping..
Continue wandering
and wondering,
Continue living this deceptive life created and composed by Those People..

Or you can choose to believe…
To have faith in something, someone….
Whatever it may be…
But, the choice is on you.
…or is it?